4.06: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (With Guest Host John Vercher)

In Episode 4.06, Dave Pezza is joined by John Vercher, author of the novel, Three-Fifths. John and Dave sat down to discuss The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

Published on July 16, 2019 by Doubleday, The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead’s seventh novel and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Set in a Floridian juvenile reformatory school in the 1960s, The Nickel Boys tells the story of Elwood Curtis, a bright African American teenager who is arrested after accidentally riding in a stolen car on his way to class.

After being sent to the Nickel Academy, Elwood must endure all the racial and social inequalities of the Jim Crowe south in their most concentrated and insidious forms at the hands the institution’s white caretakers. Elwood and his new friends must work and survive their way through hell on earth, hoping that one day they might fair better in the free world.

Next read: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (with guest host Melissa Faliveno, author of Tomboyland).